The Nahuatl language of
Mecayapan and Tatahuicapan, Veracruz
is one of the more divergent variants of Nahuatl. Its nearest neighbor,
both geographically and linguistically, is the Pajapan variant. They
are located in the northern part of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and
for this reason they have together been known as Isthmus Nahuatl.

The two municipalities had a combined population of about 30,000
according to the census taken in 2000.

The speakers of this language sometimes refer to it as Mejicano
'Mexican',
but more often they call it mela'tájto̱l, which
comes historically from melac 'straight, right, true' plus
tájto̱l 'word'.
The related verb mela'tajtohua (literally 'talk true')
means 'talk Nahuatl'.

This variant of Nahuatl uses t where
other
variants have tl
in word initial and medial positions. Word final
t and k become
glottal stops.
So the word meaning 'man', which is tla̱catl
in most Nahuatl, is
ta̱ga'
in this variant.

Vowel length, which is written with an underline,
is more noticeable and functional than in most other variants.
For instance 'salt' is
ista'
and 'white' is
ista̱';
's/he/it passed' is
panoj
and 's/he/it will pass' is
pano̱j.

This variant is also unusual in having
voicedstops,
such as the b in
babasoti', 'disheveled',
the d in
dadapoti' 'rough (surface)' or the
g in
go̱xi, '(spinning) top'.
[You can clearly hear the final glottal stop on babasoti'
when it is pronounced before the suffix -san 'only', in the word
babasoti'san 'only disheveled'.
The lack of a final glottal stop is equally clear when -san
is added to go̱xi to form the word
go̱xisan 'only a top'.]

Bandstand and Municipal offices, Mecayapan

Church and central park, Tatahuicapan
(San Martín volcano in background)

This seems to be the only variant of Nahuatl which differentiates first person
plural
inclusive
['you and I (and perhaps others)'] from
exclusive
['I and others (but not you)'].
Matia̱ca̱n means 'let us inclusive go',
mania̱ca̱n means 'let us exclusive go'.
The object prefixes on the verb do not mark plurality. Plurality in such cases is only
marked by a suffix, and the suffix is ambiguous as to whether it refers to the
subject or the object. Thus
quitamacaquej,
with the plural past tense suffix -quej,
could mean 's/he/it fed them' or 'they fed them' or 'they fed him/her/it'.
Nimitztamacaquej can mean 'I fed you pl.', 'we fed you pl.',
or 'we fed you sg.'.